"... to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to
relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a
selection of language really used by men; and, at the same time,
to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby
ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual
way…"
—Wordsworth

"Then the angel may appear, then nature, then things, then others,
then, if ever, the achievement of the ordinary, the faith to be plain,
or not to be."
—Stanley Cavell

These citations from Wordsworth's preface to his Lyrical
Ballads and Stanley Cavell's late romantic reflections on the
ordinary establish the kind of thinking that animates the
architecture of the Belgian practice architecten de vylder
vinck taillieu (A DVVT). The firm is composed of Jan De Vylder,
Inge Vinck and Jo Taillieu, who all studied at Sint-Lucas in
Ghent. Theirs is an architecture that begins in the milieu of
everyday existence. Unlike many other architectural styles
of today, they go back to the basics of the craft of architecture:
they love to build, and this pleasure manifests itself in their
actual constructions. Their projects offer a counterbalance to
the often rigid and cold structures that are built everywhere
these days. Intuitiveness, straightforwardness, playfulness and
coincidences are central to their work.

Top: the
rear façade of Twiggy, a
townhouse in central Ghent.
Protected as a heritage
monument, it was originally
an office block, converted
by the Belgian office into a
fashion store. Above: The façade of Weze, 2012

They have erected all kinds of buildings throughout Flanders,
ranging from large projects — such as rehearsal rooms for the
dance-theatre collective Les Ballets C de la B (see Domus 928,
2009), the lod opera production house and the offices of the
Toneelhuis theatre company — to smaller schemes and many
renovations that are of equal importance to the human scale
of architecture. Their several larger projects currently being
developed include the Wivina apartments for the elderly, the
Dienstencentrum Ledeberg — a service centre that houses offices
for the police — theatre infrastructure, etc.

A DVVT undertake masterful renovations of Belgian vernacular
houses, turning the difficulties and obstacles of such projects
into opportunities. Treating every project separately and
starting each time from a blank mental slate, they do not
strive for a signature architectural style in their work. Their
architecture is very subtle, never dramatically present and
does not aim to make overt statements. It's an architecture
that starts from the needs of the client, the programme and the
ensuing practical constraints. The materiality of the given is
their only guide, and a fresh aesthetic approach emerges out of
every new context.

Subtle alterations
distinguish the Belgian
studio’s work, such as in the new staircase
that can be glimpsed on the
street front

Their aesthetics makes no overarching claim other than to
bring out the beauty and potential of what they find. The look
of their projects is often determined by practical motivations
and solutions, and the decorations that arise from these factors.
The ordinary becomes the foundation, the cornerstone. A wide
range of ideas are formed during the on-site process, inspired
by found objects and emerging through interactions and
discussions with contractors.

There is also a layer of humour, with a cultivated wink
embedded in the sites for those who take the time to see it. Their
buildings become paintings that often conceal a trompe l'oeil,
a deception of the the eye. They love to play tricks while at the
same time hiding their hand in the construction. Here are three
examples of these themes.

Their buildings become paintings
that often conceal a trompe
l’oeil. They love to play tricks
while hiding their hand in the
construction

In Weze,
the trompe l’oeil effect of the
outside door to the kitchen is created using
the same bricks as those of
the façade, but with
a reduced thickness, while the
mortar joints were aligned
with the surrounding wall

Weze, 2012
One of their latest renovations is the Weze house, which they
converted form a small old school by means of just three slight
alterations that manage to maintain the atmosphere and idea of
a classroom.

Firstly, an extra entrance was required to access the kitchen on
the front façade. However, due to the rhythm of the windows on
this front, it would have been almost impossible to insert a door in
an aesthetically well-considered way. This difficulty became an
opportunity for the architects to explore their interest in sleight-of-
hand architectural effects. The result was a trompe l'oeil door
made of the same material as the façade, and accordingly equipped
with sliced brick detailing and mortar joints that follow the pattern
of the surrounding wall. Thus, when the door is closed it seems
to disappear into the façade, its presence only given away by the
concrete doorstep that triggers one's attention. The architects call it
the "Delhaize door"; Delhaize is a Belgian food retailer, hence it is a
door to pass through to bring the groceries home.

Subtle alterations
distinguish the Belgian
studio’s work, such as the
colour contrast on the rear
façade of the house

Secondly, the kitchen is faced with green multiplex boards,
with the handles in the same material to give the kitchen a fine
modular rhythm. The architects' third intervention was to add
a wall in soaped wood to close off the kitchen from the living
room. Into the wall they incorporated a trompe l'oeil pivoted doorcabinet
and a pass-through opening that mimics the windows
on the façade (even the glass in the lower part is made out of the
same cathedral glass as the pre-existing windows).

The window made it possible to bring natural light into the far
end of the kitchen since there are no windows on the façade
opposite the Delhaize door. Here again, decoration derives from
need. A trompe l'oeil revolving wall in the form of a pivoted doorcabinet
provides access to the kitchen from the rest of the house.
This wall can be left open or even turned around so the shelves of
the kitchen face towards the living room.

In the Weze house, access to the kitchen is
provided through a secondary
entrance that was created in
the thick perimeter wall at
the back of the house. In a
second phase the courtyard
is to accommodate an atelier,
plans for which are already
being developed. A structure
of fair-faced bricks is
envisaged with a single-pitch
roof supported by a series of
metal column-beams

Twiggy, 2012
"The old house; we need to keep it, it's a monument. Except for
one floor! And we mirror it; in the doors of the changing rooms,
behind the counter, in the thick façade."
—architecten de vylder vinck taillieu

Here the architects were asked to convert a former 18th-century
townhouse, protected as a heritage monument, into a clothes
shop for women and men. While the street side was to remain
untouched, the specific task was to define the circulation to allow
customers to reach the different floors. Furthermore, in addition
to the internal staircase, safety regulations required them to
include an external staircase along the rear heritage façade.

A furnished wall with a
rotating door-cabinet and
a pass-through allows the
kitchen and the living
room of the Weze house to be connected

This addition was made possible by pushing out the rear elevation
and creating a stairwell in the space between the added rear façade
and the pre-existing rear façade. The resulting elevation appears
to unfold as it mirrors or copies the original rear façade. Here again,
the trompe l'oeil makes its return. Rather than designing a totally
new construction, the architects used and played with the existing
style in the conception of this added volume, which has introduced
a fascinating, almost sculptural dimension to the building.

The new stairwell became like a house of mirrors, with the
inside of the rear façade covered in mirrors except for the
openings of the windows, which are left visible between the
reflective surfaces. From the new concrete stairs one looks
across to the other staircase running parallel.

The living room of the Weze house

Apart from the stairwell and mirrors, almost nothing has been
added. Instead, the architects took things away, stripping the
wallpaper and leaving the wall underneath unfinished as
its new décor. As is often the case with houses, over time this
building has received many layers of modifications, for example
with the addition of a number of doorways. The architects
removed the doors but left the openings, and marked their
subtraction with fluorescent red-orange paint to accentuate the
absurdities, highlighting the mistakes like schoolteachers.

Finally, they removed the ceiling between two floors in order
to create a single double-height space, but without erasing the
difference between the two stories, as can be seen in the sudden
change of panelling. Moreover, by leaving the fireplace intact
on the wall of the upper storey, they reveal what seems to be a
floating fireplace. Everywhere there are look-throughs, and the
resulting store is virtually a labyrinth of passages.

Inside the house, all the
constructional and systems
elements have been left
unfaced, while open beams
visually connect the two
levels and allow light to filter
in from above

Meulestede, 2011
This house was designed for a competition organised by Ghent's
municipal urban development company AG SOB (Autonoom
Gemeentelijk Stadsontwikkelingsbedrijf Gent). The competition
brief called for a preliminary design for a terraced house and
plot project in Ghent. The idea was to provide bare (constructionready)
plots at an affordable price to private buyers, and anyone
who bought one of these plots would be obliged to work with one
of the ten groups of architects that had been pre-selected through
the competition. In each case the design is adapted to the needs of
the individual buyer and assignment.

The interior of the Weze house

The Meulestede terraced house was finished in 2011. The street
façade is constructed of layers of different sizes of light-baked,
clay-coloured, fast-build bricks. These sorts of bricks are normally
plastered, but the architects left parts of them visible in their
original form. Inside, sections of the fast-build brick walls
are painted white and others are left fair-faced. The base or
substructure is 11 metres deep and the superstructure is 6,83
metres deep. On the rear façade the superstructure is covered
with brick-patterned shingles. Inside everything reveals how it
was constructed; nothing is hidden. One sees an intermingling of
concrete, wood, glass and painted or unpainted fast-build bricks.
Almost every element arises from practical needs and is shown
as it is, even down to the electrical wiring.

Left, since a new
stair well had to be
built into the back of the
Twiggy house, and the elevation
could not be altered due to
conservation restraints, the
architects literally cut out and
“extruded” a block of façade
corresponding to the stair
volume while maintaining its
identical design. Right, By removing the slab
between two floors of the
store to create a doubleheight
space, the architects
fully express their playful
design philosophy. Utilising
demolished walls, trompes
l’oeil and the ironical
conversion of earlier features,
they have even left a fireplace
in its original position, now
floating in midair

The spaces between the wooden beams that shoulder parts
of the first floor are filled in on one side (where zones such as
the bedroom are located), while in other parts (such as for the
staircase) the gaps are left open to allow light to penetrate
vertically from the higher-placed windows on the first and
second floors. Instead of the standard light concentrated in a
single point, the inhabitants thus receive a more pleasurable
defuse light that comes from above. Angelique Campens, writer, researcher and curator